The Drawings of Michelangelo and His Followers in the Ashmolean Museum

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THE DISPERSAL AND FORMATION OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE’S COLLECTION OF DRAWINGS 31

putatively owned by Michele degli Alberti rather than

those owned by Giacomo Rocca, given that those that

were most probably Rocca’s and that passed though the

collections of the Cavaliere d’Arpino and the Ciccia-

porci family before eventually being dispersed from the

last, bear neither inscription nor number. As a work-

ing hypothesis, it may be submitted that Michele degli

Alberti and whoever obtained possession of the draw-

ings after Michele’s death might be identified as, respec-

tively, theBona Roticollector and the Irregular Number-

ing Collector – or vice versa.^172

Sandrart did not acquire the Bona Roti/Irregular

Numbering series in its entirety, and it is virtually certain

that some drawings had already been separated out and

purchased by other collectors. One of the Michelangelo

drawings so inscribed, now at Christ Church, was copied

in an etching in the Caraccesque publication, “La scuola

perfetta,” shortly after 1600 and may well have been on

the market at this time.^173 And one of the sheets owned

byBernardo Buontalenti, that now is in the British

Museum (W 27 /Corpus 185 ), also bears an irregular

number (No. 23 ). This sheet subsequently passed to Casa

Buonarroti together with Michelangelo the Younger’s

acquisition of a group of Michelangelo drawings once

owned by Buontalenti, where it joined at least one

drawing still bearing the Irregular Number, and another

which probably once did, which may have been acquired

byMichelangelo the Younger at the presumed dispersal

of the collection.^174

There is also at least one case in which the Cava-

liere d’Arpino seems to have added a drawing from the

Bona Roti/Irregular Numbering series to those that we

may assume he had acquired from Giacomo Rocca. A

Michelangelo drawing in the Louvre, which bears on its

recto theBona Rotiinscription and the irregular number

21 , carries on its verso the inscriptionArpino, which –

whether it is taken as an indication of the inscriber’s view

of the drawing’s authorship or ownership – shows that it

was believed to have been in his possession.^175 There is

also, as we shall see, a later moment at which some of the

Bona Roti/Irregular Numbering series could have come

onto the market. Indeed, partial dispersals from this series

or related ones could have occurred at various times.

It is likely that Sandrart acquired some drawings by

Michelangelo other than those that had formed part of

theBona Roti/Irregular Numbering series. Thus, not

all the drawings in Haarlem bear either inscriptions or

numbers, and among these is theRunning Manfor the

Battle of Cascinaalready mentioned, the figure employed

byMichele degli Alberti and Giacomo Rocca in15 6 8.

Thus, it may be that some drawings putatively inher-

ited by Rocca did not follow the others into the Cava-

liere d’Arpino’s collection but were dispersed individually

and that, by the 1620 s, a few drawings by Michelangelo

that had been together in Daniele da Volterra’s possession

some sixty years earlier and had subsequently been divided

between or among his pupils had drifted back onto the

market and had subsequently rejoined one another in col-

lections formed in earlyseicentoRome.

Sandrart’s collection was acquired, apparently in

tranchesbetween 1645 and 1651 ,byPieter Spiering van

Silfvercroon, the Swedish ambassador to Holland. Silf-

vercroon’s collection, in which alibroof drawings by

Michelangelo was specifically mentioned, was acquired

from Silfvercroon and his heirs by Queen Christina

between 1651 and 1653 .Following her abdication in

1654 , Christina’s collection of drawings travelled with

her to Italy: Whether she further augmented it there is

unknown. At her death in 1689 , her various collections

werebequeathed to Cardinal Decio Azzolini. Azzolini

died shortly thereafter, and the drawings were subse-

quently sold by his nephew to the Duke of Bracciano,

Don Livio Odescalchi. Livio added a very large num-

ber of drawings to the collection, and, after his death in

1713 ,aninventory, which numbered 10 , 160 sheets and

five sketchbooks; was compiled. Among these is listed

an album of 23 pages – perhaps thelibroreferred to by

Silfvercroon – containing

in se carta ventitre, e tra questo una`e tagliata in mezzo, ed in

dette carte si trovano incollati parte, e parte staccati disegni

in tutto numero trenta-due tutti di Michelangelo Buona

Roto, detto Libro quantunque apparisca cartolato sino al

numero cento, restano nulladimeno solamente alle sudette

carte ventitre vedendonis tutte le altre tagliate et portate via.

Thus, from an album that had once contained one hun-

dred pages mounted with drawings by or attributed to

Michelangelo – a significant total in relation to the irreg-

ular numberings – only twenty-three pages remained, on

which thirty-two drawings were either still fastened or

from which they had come loose. By this token, the whole

album would once have contained, presumably, about15 0

drawings. It is odd that a collector so evidently passion-

ate as the Duke of Bracciano would have disposed of so

large a portion of his precious drawings, and it is open

to suspicion that the remaining sheets of the album had

either been pilfered between the death of the Duke and

the taking of the inventory, or, more likely, removed from

the album by Azzolini’s nephew before he sold the col-

lection to the Duke: If so, this would account for the fact

that other Michelangelo drawings bearing theBona Roti